Inspiring

Question

Acrobat Action to Find and Copy Files With Colored Text

Forum|Forum|15 days ago
July 29, 2026
4 replies
77 views

I know how to create Acrobat preflight profiles, and I know how to create actions that use preflight profiles, and I have an action that uses a preflight profile that checks a bunch of PDFs and copies any with color to a folder.

But, I’d like to narrow that down to finding just text objects with color, but I can’t for life of me figure it out.

I’ve found the single fixup “Object is not black” but that does all objects.

Is there really no way to do this or am I missing something?

Thanks!
Ken

sarremsaad4

Participant

You’re probably not missing anything, as Acrobat’s preflight options can be surprisingly limited for filtering only colored text. Hopefully there’s a workaround or custom profile, and discussions like this are as useful as recommendations shared through ISBO 7.

K

ken_7703Author

Inspiring

Hey Amal, thanks for answering.

Mostly they’re PDFs that were generated from InDesign that are being placed in another InDesign file as artwork. I don’t THINK they’ll be any with spot colors.

The test file to the printer came back with “There is some 4C black type” so I was hoping to at least find those some how.

Working in the most recent Acrobat DC.

Ideally I’d like to find them, copy and fix them. That way I can have a quick look at them to make sure there was nothing that was changed that shouldn’t have been.

There are somewhere around just under 500 PDFs.

I want to detect any color text.

Earlier I had found the “Correct 4c Black” fixup but it wasn’t working because (I’ve not discovered) there is RGB in some files. So, I added the “Convert color to 4c for digital printing” fixup and that works.

So currently I have two actions, one that copies all PDFs with color in them, and one that fixes them. I run the first, examine the copied files, then process only the files I want to through the second action.

The only safe way I can see to do everything at once would be to be able to target just text for the color conversions, which I don’t THINK is possible.

Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

Hello @Ken,

I hope you are doing well, and thank you for sharing all the details. We're sorry for the trouble you had.

++ adding to what our Adobe employee has shared above, and to answer your questions. Yes, Acrobat Pro Preflight can be narrowed to text objects for detection. Acrobat Preflight checks that can be customised to detect text that “isn’t plain black,” including text that uses black plus some amount of cyan, magenta, and yellow, and it notes that the check can be modified to flag text objects that use more than one colour. Also, the custom checks can combine properties from groups such as Page Description, object type, including whether an object is text, and Colours/Graphic State, colour spaces and fill/stroke colour values. So the “Object is not black” route is too broad, but a custom text-only check is the right direction. Please check this article for more detailed information: Additional checks in the Preflight tool (Acrobat Pro).

Suggested workflow: Please note that this may or may not work, depending on the current version of the app installed, or if you have any custom environment or restrictions.

Open one of the test PDFs in Acrobat Pro.
Go to All tools > Use print production > Preflight.
In the Preflight dialogue, go to the Profiles tab.
Either duplicate an existing profile or create a new one:
- Options > Duplicate Profile, or
- Options > Create Profile.
Edit the profile and unlock it if needed.
Under the profile, choose Custom checks.
Create or duplicate a check that combines:
- a Page Description property that limits the result to text objects, and
- a Colors / Graphic State property that flags non-black / multi-color / RGB / CMYK color use.
For 4-color black text, the useful logic is essentially:
- object type = text, and
- text uses more than one process color, or black plus nonzero C/M/Y.
For RGB text, use the same text-object filter, but target RGB/color-space properties instead.
Run the profile with Analyze first, not Analyze and Fix, so you can confirm that only the intended text objects are being reported.

For visual verification, you can also use All tools > Use print production > Output preview. In Output Preview, Acrobat lets you view colors by source space and specific element types such as text, and its Color Warnings > Rich Black option can help identify rich black usage before output. That’s useful for spot-checking, although Preflight is the better option for batch detection.

Copying only the affected PDFs

For your batch workflow, use the text-only Preflight profile in a droplet or Action:

Go to All tools > Use print production > Preflight.
Choose Options > Create Droplet.
Select your text-colour Preflight profile.
In the droplet/action handling options, choose Copy PDF File and send problem files to the Error folder.
Run the droplet/action on your batch.

Fixing the files

For fixing, I’d be more cautious. Adobe documents that Preflight fixups permanently change the PDF, and that color-conversion operations can change color values in the document. Acrobat’s Convert Colors tool can target all colors or colors for specified object types, and it includes matching criteria such as Object Type, Color Type, and Text Size. So a text-scoped color conversion is the safer approach than running a broad all-object fixup. [https://adobe.ly/4fDAP3z ], [https://adobe.ly/4fDAP3z ]

In practice, I’d keep your two-pass workflow unless you have fully tested the profile on representative files:

Pass 1: Text-only Preflight check → copy suspect PDFs to a review folder.
Review the Preflight results or report.
Pass 2: Apply a tested text-scoped conversion/fixup only to the reviewed files.

If the predefined fixup you are using does not expose an object-type/text-only matching criterion, I would not use it as an all-in-one automatic fix for this job, because it may also affect non-text objects.

Since your PDFs are mostly coming from InDesign, this should work where the text remains real PDF text. But if the source PDF has been flattened, outlined, or rasterized, Acrobat may no longer see that content as text.

Also, let us know how it goes, and if the issue still persists, please share a sample PDF file through which you are able to reproduce, the source file, the current version of Acrobat, and InDesign so that we can test it at our end.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

Amal Jaiswal

Community Manager

Hi @ken_7703

Hope you are doing well, and thanks for reaching out. We are sorry for the trouble you are experiencing.
Let me ask a couple of quick questions before we dive into the steps, so we can point you in the right direction.

Are you checking for any non-black text color (RGB, CMYK, spot), or is this specifically about a particular color mode like RGB-only or a specific ink?
Are your PDFs coming from a print production workflow (CMYK) or mixed sources like Word / InDesign / web output (which might carry RGB text)?
Which version of Acrobat Pro are you running?
What is the source application for these PDFs?
For example, InDesign, Word, Illustrator, or a mix? This matters because colored text from InDesign typically lands in the PDF as a proper text object with a fill color, but text from some other sources can get flattened into outlines or images during export
When you say "colored text," are you including text that uses a spot color (like a Pantone), or is this purely about process color (CMYK or RGB)?
Spot colors and process colors sit in different property groups inside Preflight, so the check logic is a bit different depending on the answer.
Are you looking to detect colored text, copy the files, and leave them as-is, or is there an end goal of eventually fixing the color (converting to black) as well?
If fixing is on the horizon, we can build a fixup into the same profile at the same time, saving you a second pass later.
How many PDFs are typically in a batch when you run this action?
If it is a very large batch (hundreds or thousands of files), there are some performance considerations worth factoring into how the check and copy step are structured.

Once we have answers to these questions, we can share more relevant troubleshooting steps.

~Amal

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.